Ryan Englin on The Manage 2 Win Podcast: Aligning Core Values with Business Success

I went on The Manage 2 Win Podcast with David Russell to talk about what happens when companies get serious about their core values and what happens when they fake it.

David asked me right out of the gate where the name Core Matters came from. The short version: I started as a fractional CMO helping home service contractors find customers. The work that moved the needle most was getting clear on who the company really was. Their values. Their behaviors. Their communication style. When I transitioned the business to helping those same companies find employees, I looked back and realized that same foundational work was even more critical for building teams. The core of your business matters more than anything else. That's not a slogan. It's the truth.

We spent a good chunk of the conversation on a question David kept coming back to: how do you make sure companies actually live their values instead of just framing them on a wall? Enron had four values cast in bronze outside their headquarters. We all know how that ended.

My answer is simple. I don't sit down with a leadership team for a couple hours and hand them words. I watch how they behave. I have conversations about behaviors. Because core values are a verb. Every value needs to be something I can see and witness. If I can't witness it, it's not a core value. It might be something you aspire to. But aspiration and identity are two different things.

I told David about a roofing company owner who had "hungry, humble, smart" plastered everywhere. Straight from Patrick Lencioni's book. I looked at the guy and told him he was the least humble person I'd ever met. He didn't love hearing that. But ignoring it and letting him keep going down that path only hurts him and his team.

Then I shared the story of the five passive-aggressive fraternity brothers. Five guys who went to high school together running a company like a frat house. I told them they were the most passive-aggressive bunch I'd ever met. The CEO stood up and said "hell yeah we are." So instead of fighting who they were, we owned it. We rewrote their sales job ad to reflect their actual culture. Their procurement director read the new ad without knowing it was his own company and said "I want to work here." Sales went up. Turnover disappeared. Not because passive aggression is healthy. Because authenticity attracts the right people.

We also dug into a company where the values were pretty good but the purpose statement was flat. The owner had a deep personal mission around using his business as a ministry tool. Planting churches. Impacting communities. Helping people flourish. But his purpose statement didn't capture any of that. It took us a couple months to rework it. He felt like he was redoing work he'd already done. He was. And it made all the difference.

I walked David through how we validate values before they ever get rolled out. Every leader on the team has to tell at least two stories from the last month of each value showing up. If you can't tell stories, it's not a real value. Then in daily standups or weekly meetings, people share stories of values in action. That forces them to watch for the values before the meeting even starts. Values are caught, not taught.

David wanted to know how we test for value alignment in the hiring process. I told him what I tell everyone. Stop making it a head-based interview where you test how well someone rehearses answers. Make it a heart-based interview where you see who they really are. If punctuality matters, schedule the interview for 7:00 AM and see if they show up at 6:50. If learning matters, don't ask "do you like to learn." Say "tell me about a book you're reading that impacted you personally." Faking a process is harder than faking an answer.

I also touched on something I feel strongly about. People don't leave jobs. They leave people. And the reason they leave people is because they have no relationship. You spend more time with your employer than your family. If you sacrifice that time and get zero connection in return, you leave. Every single time.

We closed with a story about a general contractor who found an estimator using our approach. The candidate told them the job ad felt like it was written for them. Like this was the job they'd been searching for their whole career. That's what happens when you know who you are, market it authentically, and then invest in the person once they arrive. Profit margins went up. The estimates got better. Because when the right person lands in the right environment, they think like you think, they act like you act, and they watch out for the company.

If you liked this conversation, I go deeper on values discovery, the four-stage interview, and building your employer brand on Titans of the Trades. Subscribe for more conversations like this.